Opposed to this florid, careless, loose, and inaccurate style, that of the simple, careful, pure, and correct style of Poussin seems to be a complete contrast.

Yet however opposite their characters, in one thing they agreed, both of them having a perfect correspondence between all the parts of their respective manners.

One is not sure but every alteration of what is considered as defective in either, would destroy the effect of the whole.

Poussin lived and conversed with the ancient statues so long, that he may be said to be better acquainted with then than with the people who were about him.  I have often thought that he carried his veneration for them so far as to wish to give his works the air of ancient paintings.  It is certain he copied some of the antique paintings, particularly the “Marriage in the Albrobrandini Palace at Rome,” which I believe to be the best relique of those remote ages that has yet been found.

No works of any modern has so much of the air of antique painting as those of Poussin.  His best performances have a remarkable dryness of manner, which, though by no means to be recommended for imitation, yet seems perfectly correspondent to that ancient simplicity which distinguishes his style.  Like Polidoro he studied them so much, that he acquired a habit of thinking in their way, and seemed to know perfectly the actions and gestures they would use on every occasion.

Poussin in the latter part of his life changed from his dry manner to one much softer and richer, where there is a greater union between the figures and the ground, such as the “Seven Sacraments” in the Duke of Orleans’ collection; but neither these, nor any in this manner, are at all comparable to many in his dry manner which we have in England.

The favourite subjects of Poussin were ancient fables; and no painter was ever better qualified to paint such subjects, not only from his being eminently skilled in the knowledge of ceremonies, customs, and habits of the ancients, but from his being so well acquainted with the different characters which those who invented them gave their allegorical figures.  Though Rubens has shown great fancy in his Satyrs, Silenuses, and Fauns, yet they are not that distinct separate class of beings which is carefully exhibited by the ancients and by Poussin.  Certainly when such subjects of antiquity are represented, nothing in the picture ought to remind us of modern times.  The mind is thrown back into antiquity, and nothing ought to be introduced that may tend to awaken it from the illusion.

Poussin seemed to think that the style and the language in which such stories are told is not the worse for preserving some relish of the old way of painting which seemed to give a general uniformity to the whole, so that the mind was thrown back into antiquity not only by the subject, but the execution.